The Academic Advisor of Kocaeli, TÜBA Associate Member Prof. Dr. Halit Keskin
TÜBA Associate Member and Gebze Technical University Business Faculty Teaching Staff Member Prof. Dr. Halit Keskin was appointed as the ‘Academic Advisor’ to Kocaeli within the scope of the “81 with 81 Academic Advisors” project that the Turkish Union of Chambers and Exchange Commodities (TOBB) developed to contribute to local development and cooperation between universities and the business world.
The goal of the project is to improve the capacity of the chambers and exchange commodities of Turkey in 81 provinces and 160 districts to create city and region strategies by producing local data and information. TOBB Chairman M. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu who spoke about the project said “We must give priority to our cities in order to achieve success in global competition. We need to light the fuse of local development again. We have assigned academic advisors to 70 provinces at present. The academic advisors for the remaining 11 provinces will be determined in the coming days. The advisors will produce projects for local development’’.
Emphasizing that we need to bring our local values and our cities to the forefront Hisarcıklıoğlu said, “The ‘81 with 81 Academicians’ project will bring a whole new vision to the local development approach. We have assigned academic advisors to 70 provinces at present. 53 of these have started working in their assigned duties. 45 percent of the assigned advisors are academicians who have been educated or served in a teaching capacity abroad. In 2015 our chambers and exchanges will provide more support to local development with our academic advisors. The academic advisors will contribute to the institutional capacity of our chambers and exchanges and the structuring of local data production capacity”.
Concerning the project and his appointment as one of the 81 academicians, TÜBA Associate Member Prof. Dr. Halit Keskin said, “Academic advisors have been assigned to our 81 provinces by the TOBB to reinforce "university – business world" cooperation, develop local strategy and increase the data production capacity. Following the demands and needs of the business world and accurately determining the agenda of local development is essential for Turkey to reach its economic goals. Academic advisors will be undertaking an important role in this context.
I too have been assigned by the TOBB, with the agreement of all chambers (Kocaeli Chamber of Commerce, Kocaeli Chamber of Industry, Gebze Chamber of Commerce and the Gulf Chamber of Commerce) to the province of Kocaeli, the industrial center of our country, as an “Academic Advisor”. The academic advisors will be providing consultation services to all of the Chambers and Exchanges operating in the provinces and districts. As a member of TÜBA I am very pleased to have been selected for this duty”.